To tell the truth, La América was a nondescript place. It was a former lunatic asylum, a two-story brick house topped by a small tower called the Turret of the Raving Mad where they used to lock up patients in straitjackets. It now housed Ariel’s apartment. The Center was located in a secluded alley, behind a shabby plot of grass, cluttered with various transportation devices used by teachers and students alike, such as bicycles, roller skates, and skateboards, for they loathed technology and gas pollutants as much as they hated material gain. Rosélie soon noticed that at La América Art and Politics made strange bedfellows. The teachers, most of them refugees disowned by their governments, felt no gratitude toward their American savior. They constantly criticized U.S. foreign policy, and at the slightest pretext would demonstrate in the street, brandishing banners and defying the police. A march against the U.S. intervention in Somalia emptied the Pottery and Sculpture Department for weeks on end.
Professionally speaking, Stephen was right. Rosélie had no qualifications to teach. A classroom is a bit like a circus arena in which the lion tamer risks being devoured by his cubs at any moment. Rosélie, however, had no intention of taming anyone. She tolerated everything, imposed nothing, and thus liberated their creativity. Furthermore, as she had never known how to use words, she listened. For hours on end, sitting in her tiny office after class, she was almost carried away by the torrent of students’ stories. Mothers battered by depraved husbands. Sisters drawn and quartered. Brothers robbing, raping, and murdering. Cousins dead from an overdose. Or else their bodies riddled with bullets by the police or rival gangs. Young boys and girls just out of prison or detoxification centers. Orphans killing themselves to feed their siblings. A fifteen-year-old taking care of her handicapped parents all on her own. By comparison her life seemed privileged. Even the quarrels between Rose and her Don Juan of a husband paled in comparison. Insipid. Despite her low regard for literature, she was dying to put these dramatic tales on paper and submit them to a major publishing house on the Left Bank, thus revealing the other side of the American Dream, the distress and abject misery hidden under the clichés: “the most powerful nation in the world” or “the triumph of democracy.” But they would accuse her of exaggerating and lapsing into pessimism and despair.
People prefer schmaltzy stories. Exotic tales from the Caribbean. Once-upon-a-time stories. Spicy perfumes.
Life is marvelous. If you haven’t noticed, you haven’t hung your plow upon a star. Arab proverb!
In short, it wasn’t long before the students at La América, like its director, were conquered by their new mistress.
“Love, the only love that exists,” wrote André Breton. “Carnal love, I adore, I’ve never stopped adoring your poisonous shadow, your fatal shadow.”
Rosélie and Ariel made love every day after classes in the Turret of the Raving Mad. I leave it up to you to imagine the scene.
This lasted a month, six months, perhaps a year. They lost track of time.
One morning — the memory of it shut out by her conscience still haunted her — this guilty happiness came to an end. Very suddenly. It was winter: a winter of ice and frost common to New York. The voracious beast had blown down from Canada, leaving a whirlwind of snow in its wake. It had frozen at dawn and the slippery crust on the sidewalks glistened in the timid morning sun. Wrapped up to their eyes, passersby groped their way along. At La América, students and teachers were crowded in the yard. The amazing news was on everyone’s lips: Ariel had been arrested.
The pigs had picked him up at dawn. They accused him of having ties with drug dealers and laundering money on their behalf. La América was closed. Classes suspended.
Rosélie collapsed into the arms of Stephen, who once again said not a word of reproach.
What can passion be compared to? To a hurricane, David, Hugo, or Belinda, that swoops down on the island and ravages it entirely. There is nothing you can do about a hurricane except wait for its fury to pass. And that’s what he had done. He had tried to warn her, to whisper that Ariel was a shady character. But had she been listening? Rosélie’s chagrin was mixed with a feeling of humiliation. So she had fallen for a crook, one of those petty criminals that America produces by the thousand, a crony of Manuel Noriega’s. The papers are full of their pitiful exploits. Because of him, she had hurt the best of men, the most perfect of companions. For although Stephen hadn’t breathed a word, it was obvious he had suffered. He who was so fussy about his appearance, maniacal to the point of ironing his shirts himself and sending a suit back to the cleaners three times because of a crease in the trousers, now wore a shapeless pullover and a wrinkled pair of jeans. His hair curled down over his collar. His face was gaunt and haggard. He hadn’t written one line or given a paper for months. He skipped through his classes.
Fina asserted just the opposite. While struggling to keep her weight down along the frozen paths of Riverside Park, she maintained that Ariel was an idealist, crazy about Art, with his head in the clouds. It basically boiled down to a political conspiracy. The State Department had wanted to destroy La América, a den of subversion. As for his swinging both ways, that was pure slander. Dozens of beauties could honestly swear that Ariel was a lover of women. Despite all her efforts, she couldn’t manage to convince Rosélie to take the train to a prison in upstate New York. It’s in B movies that lovers exchange tearful looks through the glass of the visiting room.
Ariel was freed after three months. No charge could be held against him. La América’s books were in order. Its respected donors included a Saudi prince, a Kuwaiti, and a descendant of Winston Churchill.
The Center reopened its doors. But the enthusiasm had gone. Teachers and students alike had fled. In the empty classrooms there remained only a dozen students and two teachers: a Spanish anarchist, master in the technique of azulejos, and a Japanese communist, enamored of Gothic painting.
Using Fina as a go-between, Ariel sent Rosélie a series of enigmatic and passionate letters begging her not to confuse those who adored her with those who used her as a screen. She didn’t answer. Not that she didn’t love him anymore. On the contrary, when she thought of him, her entire being melted. Water poured from every part and every orifice of her body. And then she couldn’t stop dreaming of the world they had hoped to build at La América. A world enamored of Art, diversity, and tolerance. Nobody would have to shoulder a prefabricated identity any longer, like a deadly garrote strangling the neck. A black woman could curl up in peace beside her white man. But the idea of hurting Stephen was unbearable. Never again. She’d rather die.
This enraged Fina.
“You’re sacrificing yourself for nothing! For nothing!” she maintained.
For nothing?
“Is it Stephen you’re calling nothing?” she choked each time Fina said it.
Fina was seething, but didn’t answer.
One afternoon, beside herself, she stopped dead in the middle of the park and began yelling at all the echoes:
“Yes! Your Stephen is de la mierda. Do you hear me? De la mierda!”
As a good Latina, Fina had accustomed Rosélie to cut-and-dried expressions such as coño, carajo, and other curse words. But the friendship between the two women was unable to survive this one. They stopped seeing each other. Shortly afterward, Fina slammed the door on the university and went back to Venezuela, where she made a name for herself as a moviemaker. She made an autobiographical film of her childhood as an alienated bourgeois. Her only link with the people was her black grandmother, who was a magician and storyteller. About the same time, Ariel, in a more somber mood, retired to a plot of land inherited from his parents in Jérémie. The only access was by boat. It was an arid and bare piece of land where only columnar and hedge cactus grew. At night their gangling shapes could be taken for silhouettes of the dead who often wandered around in the dark. In Haiti, such things surprise no one. They call it marvelous realism. See René Depestre. Ariel tried to re-create an art school on the lines of La América. Unfortunately, in this famished country, people are ravenous for dollars. Unable to muster any volunteer teachers, he had to close the school. He ended up marrying Anthénor, pet name Sonore, the peasant woman who cooked him his pork griot and sweet potato bread. He gave her nine children, three of whom died as infants.